SPOKANE, Wash.— Did you know most water in the West arrives in the form of snow?
In fact, Idaho and Montana have some of the best snow in this west this year!
It was a grim winter for our neighbors in Colorado, Utah and Oregon, even with late-season storms it was difficult for them to catch up.
Here's a look at mountain snow comparisons between the end of January, and the middle of March, this year:
In January, Idaho and Montana reported snowpack levels anywhere between 95-110 percent of normal.
By mid-March, things only looked better! Eastern Washington, Idaho and Montana are all reporting snowpack 116-160 percent of normal.
Lookout Pass saw a total of 451 inches stack up this winter. That's 37 feet!
Schweitzer's season total was about 375 inches. That was 75 inches more than normal.
By contrast, states farther south struggled most of the winter with a lack of snowfall. As of mid-March, mountains in Oregon, Utah and Colorado are only about 50-70 percent of average.
Lookout Pass Ski Area and Schweitzer Mountain Resort operators are excited to announce they'll be open longer than normal this year...extending their ski season into April.
"Sometimes we'll get a lot of snow at the beginning of the year, like a few years ago, then it kind of peters out. This is great! We've been getting all this stuff every day," said Gregg Maddock of Lookout Pass Ski and Recreation.
It was good news for nature.
"The snow seems to fall here almost on a daily basis. Whether it's an inch, or two, or the 54 inches we've seen since Thursday," said Maddock.
"Our summer water supplies, for drinking water, for irrigation, for river flows, for stream flows, for fish, all really depend on what falls in the mountains as rain and snow," said Dave Kreft of the National Resource Conservation Service.
Snow surveyors will continue to check mountain snowpack sites around the region so we know how much runoff to watch for this spring.